Reports from the Worker Rights Consortium earlier this month revealed that adidas have failed to contribute a penny to redundancy money legally owed to 2,800 workers in an Indonesian factory, PT Kizone, which produced goods for adidas, Nike and the Dallas cowboys. The factory shut down in May after its owner fled the country. Now thousands of mainly women workers have been left unemployed and haven’t received a penny in compensation.

Activists took to London’s Oxford Street today to demand adidas pay workers the money they’re owed. Protests were also held in the USA, Canada, Austria and Indonesia. People & Planet activists are already planning actions in York and Swansea.

Protester Ashok Kumar said:

The only way we’re going to win against sweatshops is through international solidarity. In the past we’ve won massive victories and hopefully we’ll see that again in Indonesia. The way we’re going to win is by keeping the pressure on adidas til they pay up. This has been an exciting day and I’m looking forward to the future.

Corporate Power Campaigner Jim Cranshaw said

These abuses are typical of the garments industry, but today adidas have shown that they are much worse than other companies who are willing to pay the severance money in this case. Student activists have started to show adidas this is unacceptable but with US universities threatening multi-million dollar boycotts and the campaign spreading internationally like wildfire this is just the beginning. Our Buy Right campaign calls on UK universities to take action on sweatshops in their supply chain so students are getting active on this across the world.

It can’t stop here. Adidas might hope the problem will go away if they ignore us, so we need to make clear that’s not true.